Ascent Trip Report

On Thursday evening prior to this weekend, Stéphanie and I were discussing on our way to the climbing gym and we both realized we had the weekend off. It was quickly decided we'd go hiking on Saturday. I asked Luiza at the gym but she had other plans so couldn't come. Valérie joined the group and as usual, Éric, Stéphanie's partner, would come. On friday, Valérie came by at the store and asked about the destination. I told her I had some prospects for two summits near parc des Grands Jardins that would probably be fun for everyone. Later on, Stéphanie called me to confirm the plans.

On Saturday morning, I woke up at 6:30am. I prepared my stuff hastily as I was waiting for Valérie to come pick me up. She finally got there around 7:45am and we left towards Éric and Stéphanie's place. There, we exchanged cars and stuffed everything in before taking off towards Baie-Saint-Paul. The way was uneventful and the could cover was unexpectedly going against the forecast: it was grey and dim.

As we got closer to the mountains, the sky started to clear a little bit and as we gained altitude on the road, the weather changed completely. it was now an almost completely clear sky with a bright sun shining over us. As we were getting closer to our first trailhead, we stopped at La Galette, a cabin resort and RV campground. We checked my map and got a fix on the GPS before driving again to find the perfect parking spot. It turns out the logging road was just great and we had no trouble getting off the highway.

From there, we packed very light and left quickly along the logging road. The ground was iced up with a fine coating of powdery and dry snow so we had to tread carefully. We still went at a decent pace and it wasn't long before we reached the open grounds left by the great fire of 1999. From there we had nice views of the surrounding mountains. We were now able to see the Sitec Inc. mine at petit lac Malbaie, that has now almost eaten all of the mountain just northeast of mont du Barbeau. I sincerely hope they will not blast the latter as it is a P1K summit and a potential MRC high point.

A little further, we could see our goal just ahead of us. We decided to climb up the first false summit to get a good view of the valley to our east. As we descended towards the col, I stopped Éric as I had seen some movement ahead. I checked a second time and yes, it was a couple of Moose; a cow and her calf.

We hung around for a while, took pictures, and decided to keep going forward. They were right between us and our goal. When they saw we were getting closer, they started retreating west. It was perfect as it opened the way for us to climb from any angle we wanted on the last slope. The terrain was messy here, with burnt down trees strewn around in a tangled maze. We followed the moose west for a bit to circle around a steep pitch before going up north to the summit.

The last pitch was easy and we reached the summit rock in no time. The view was great, but it was only due to the clearing the forest fire left. We stayed there for pictures and left again towards the logging road that we could see from where we stood. We went in a beeline, but soon found out it might have been better to retrace our steps. The slope was steeper, and there was more brush here.

At the bottom of that pitch, we still had some fierce bushwhack to face and soon we angled further east to regain higher ground and less clutter. We joined back with our inbound footprints just below the first bump where we had spotted the moose and decided to take a lunch break when we rejoined the logging road. We ate quickly and resumed our descent. It took maybe a half hour to reach the car. From there we would drive about 4km further north on highway 381 to reach another logging road that led to our second summit.

We can start to see mont du Barbeau and the Sitec Inc. mine as we get higher.

A moose cow spotted on the mountain. Her calf is unseen in this picture.

Éric standing on the summit rock. It is totally unambiguous that it's the highest point on the mountain.

GPS Waypoints - Hover or click to see name and lat/longPeaks: climbed and unclimbed by Gabriel CouëtClick Here for a Full Screen MapNote: GPS Tracks may not be accurate, and may not show the best route. Do not follow this route blindly. Conditions change frequently. Use of a GPS unit in the outdoors, even with a pre-loaded track, is no substitute for experience and good judgment. Peakbagger.com accepts NO responsibility or liability from use of this data.